All Hail the Pros: Football in the '60s and '70s
By Jim Murray. Excerpt from the book 'Neil Leifer, Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football, 1958-1978'
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Lombardi was a recognized genius at football many years before the public found out about it, since it was a trade secret, but, by 1959, the Green Bay franchise had fallen into such despair that it needed either a genius or divine intervention. The team had won one game the year before. It was run by a committee consisting of 13 members, which is the same thing as saying it wasn't run by anybody. It was parked by the side of the road. Lombardi was out of place in that setting, where you could see cows instead of subways and hear crickets instead of cab horns. Green Bay was as secret as a naval code in war, and draft choices were found wandering all over the hills of Wisconsin with bloodhounds when they were asked to report.
Vince first demanded a five-year contract and the general managership. He told the committee he would send for them when he needed them but not to wait around the phone. He went over the list of his personnel and briefly considered trading it off to the Mayo Clinic for their outpatient list. This was the only team he had ever seen that had more whirlpool baths than it had players. You can always tell a losing team. It has more aches and pains than a bus wreck and Lombardi first walked through and announced he didn't want to see anybody in a whirlpool bath unless he had already had the last rites. As a result, he has players playing 60 mins. today in such bad shape vultures are circling over them. His first action reporting to camp was to pick up one of the biggest stars, a player who reported to practice only when the taverns were closed, by the scruff of the neck and slam him against a dormitory wall. He called for the dossier on Paul Hornung and, when they landed him a copy of "Playboy" magazine and said "Open to any page," he set his kickers to pointing the ball at Hornung until he had Hornung too tired even to read "Playboy," never mind to act it out.…["Veni, Vidi, Vincie," December 2, 1963]
Back in the days of crystal set radio, when your station selector was a cat's whisker tuner, only twice as fragile, I remember straining my ears (inside headsets) to hear prehistoric World Series, Jack Dempsey prize fights, and occasionally, Yale-Army football games. It was known as "the magic of radio," and I can tell you it was pretty magical to tune in on a contest that was going on as far as 30 miles away or sometimes clear down to New York. …You got the Boston home baseball games but, as the sales of radio sets grew, sports promoters began to question the wisdom of "giving away their shows." Pro football broadcast sponsorless out of New York, but it was a struggling medium, and the more popular forms in sports entertainment began to rebuff radio.
The popular theory of baseball broadcasts of routine season games in those days was that they were going only to a body of people known as "shut-ins," some vast army of luckless or limbless persons who could not otherwise follow our national pastime. But the plain facts of the matter were that they were going to housewives, car mechanics, factory workers, anyone who had the price of a radio, and a lot of them developed such a taste for radio baseball that they became "fans" who never went to a live game. They didn't become fans of the game, they became fans of the announcer. They were sometimes let down when they did attend a game, because it wasn't nearly as exciting as the announcer had let on.…Well, television and the coaxial cable suddenly made radio a tame medium where nobody ever listens to anything but weather reports and the correct time. But TV added another dimension to the game. You not only HEARD it, you SAW it. For some games, this was almost fatal. But for pro football, the people couldn't get enough. Largely because pro football didn't give it to them.
Page [1] [2] [3]
Page [1] [2] [3]
Lombardi was a recognized genius at football many years before the public found out about it, since it was a trade secret, but, by 1959, the Green Bay franchise had fallen into such despair that it needed either a genius or divine intervention. The team had won one game the year before. It was run by a committee consisting of 13 members, which is the same thing as saying it wasn't run by anybody. It was parked by the side of the road. Lombardi was out of place in that setting, where you could see cows instead of subways and hear crickets instead of cab horns. Green Bay was as secret as a naval code in war, and draft choices were found wandering all over the hills of Wisconsin with bloodhounds when they were asked to report.
Vince first demanded a five-year contract and the general managership. He told the committee he would send for them when he needed them but not to wait around the phone. He went over the list of his personnel and briefly considered trading it off to the Mayo Clinic for their outpatient list. This was the only team he had ever seen that had more whirlpool baths than it had players. You can always tell a losing team. It has more aches and pains than a bus wreck and Lombardi first walked through and announced he didn't want to see anybody in a whirlpool bath unless he had already had the last rites. As a result, he has players playing 60 mins. today in such bad shape vultures are circling over them. His first action reporting to camp was to pick up one of the biggest stars, a player who reported to practice only when the taverns were closed, by the scruff of the neck and slam him against a dormitory wall. He called for the dossier on Paul Hornung and, when they landed him a copy of "Playboy" magazine and said "Open to any page," he set his kickers to pointing the ball at Hornung until he had Hornung too tired even to read "Playboy," never mind to act it out.…["Veni, Vidi, Vincie," December 2, 1963]
Back in the days of crystal set radio, when your station selector was a cat's whisker tuner, only twice as fragile, I remember straining my ears (inside headsets) to hear prehistoric World Series, Jack Dempsey prize fights, and occasionally, Yale-Army football games. It was known as "the magic of radio," and I can tell you it was pretty magical to tune in on a contest that was going on as far as 30 miles away or sometimes clear down to New York. …You got the Boston home baseball games but, as the sales of radio sets grew, sports promoters began to question the wisdom of "giving away their shows." Pro football broadcast sponsorless out of New York, but it was a struggling medium, and the more popular forms in sports entertainment began to rebuff radio.
The popular theory of baseball broadcasts of routine season games in those days was that they were going only to a body of people known as "shut-ins," some vast army of luckless or limbless persons who could not otherwise follow our national pastime. But the plain facts of the matter were that they were going to housewives, car mechanics, factory workers, anyone who had the price of a radio, and a lot of them developed such a taste for radio baseball that they became "fans" who never went to a live game. They didn't become fans of the game, they became fans of the announcer. They were sometimes let down when they did attend a game, because it wasn't nearly as exciting as the announcer had let on.…Well, television and the coaxial cable suddenly made radio a tame medium where nobody ever listens to anything but weather reports and the correct time. But TV added another dimension to the game. You not only HEARD it, you SAW it. For some games, this was almost fatal. But for pro football, the people couldn't get enough. Largely because pro football didn't give it to them.
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Guts and Glory: The Golden Age of American Football, 1958-1978
Hardcover, slipcase, 39.6 x 33 cm (15.6 x 13 in.), 350 pages
$ 500.00
$ 500.00
The best of sports photographer Neil Leifer's 10,000 rolls of football pictures, including hundreds of rare and unpublished images. Limited to 1,500 copies, each numbered and signed by Neil Leifer.
Brain Trust, January 1964. Johnny Unitas, Neil Leifer, and coach Don Shula
Winners' Rituals: NFL Championship, Colts 23, Giants 17, Yankee Stadium, December 28, 1958. Photo: Neil Leifer